The Light of Hermes Trismegistus

Preface

Introduction

The Text Itself Is the Secret
• Hermeticism Reconvened: A New Imagination of Intelligence • Hermeneutics: The Further Life of the Text as Further Life of the God • Mystical Union: Parmenides, Being, and a Divine Background to the Realm of the Gods • Hodos Agnosia: The Way of Unknowing • The Divine Background and Egypt • Greece and Egypt • A Pagan Theodicy? • A God Is a Filter for Being • Configuration • The Incursive Moment

One
The Theogony of Hesiod
Translated Text
Commentary on the Theogony
• Making Gods, Making Worlds, Making Peoples, Making Poets • The Middle Voice • Self-Reference • Primordial Xaos • Genealogy, Logic, Chance • The Titans • Gender and the Gods • Form upon Chaos • Bardic Performance as Theophany • More on the Divine Background • Fate, Chance, Divination • Intransitivity • Atemporality and Eternity

Two
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes
Translated Text
Commentary on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes • Hermes and Magic • The Tortoise Lyre • On the Practice of Conscious Listening • Self-Reference in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes • Further Notes on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes

Three
The “Poem of Parmenides”
Translated Text
Commentary on the “Poem of Parmenides” • Parmenides as Mystic • Everything That Seems Must Seem to Be (from Fragment 1) • That Is (from Fragment 2) • To Think IS (from Fragment 3) • Indications (from Fragment 8) • The One • All NOW • Resembling “a well-rounded sphere” (from Fragment 8)

Four
Egypt
• Eternal Egypt • Egypt and Greece • The Priest Is the God for Whom He Officiates • The World as Inscription • Thoth • Our World as Counter Egypt • The Continuum • The Opening of Stone • The Pyramid

Five
The Poimandres
Translated Text
Commentary on the Poimandres
• The Name Poimandres • Initiation and Death • Atemporal Essence and Inalienable Immediacy • Go in Fear of the Reified Invariant

Six
The Chaldean Oracles
Translated Text
Commentary on the Chaldean Oracles
• The Configuration of Apparent Being in the Chaldean Oracles • Telestics • Theurgy • The Double Womb of Hekate • Flower of Mind • A Certain Mind Thing: Poetics and Apophasis • Hekate in Hesiod • The Hounds of Hekate • The Noetic Mandala: Synthemata and the Configuration of Correspondences

Seven
“The Vision of Isis” from the Metamorphoses of Apuleius
Translated Text
Commentary on “The Vision of Isis” • Isis and Osiris • Isis and the Moon • Eros and Persephone

Eight
“On Divine Virtue” by Zosimos of Panopolis
Translated Text
Commentary on “On Divine Virtue” • The Retroflection of Quality in Technical and Theoretical Hermetica • The Dissociation of the Sensibility • The Impossibility of Alchemy • The Origin of Alchemy in Metallurgy • The Emerald Tablet and the Language of Alchemy • The Odyssey and Alchemy: Hermes and Odysseus • Notes on the Greek Magical Papyri • Magical Charge, Ritual Violence • Language and Act

Bibliography

Index